Everything was running smoothly. Everything had been downloaded from Internet, packages had been installed and a prompt asked for some obsolete programs/files to be removed or kept. After that the computer crashed and and to manually force a shutdown. I turned it on again and surprise I was on 12.10! Still the upgrade was not finished! How can I properly finish that upgrade?

Here's the output I got in the command line after following posted instructions:

Can you install aptitude by opening a terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and typing sudo apt-get install aptitude; and then afterwards type sudo aptitude search '~o'; and then copy and paste the output from that last command into your question by clicking the little edit link under the tags? That list of packages could help us tell you what you need to remove to finish where the upgrade failed.
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Mark PaskalOct 28 '12 at 1:40

Hi there, That means I have to erase all the packages listed there? Please do instruct me on hoe to proceed. Though my new 12.10 seems to be working fine, there are some programs which seem not to be working, like Unity. Moreover, there's probably something more important that was missed during the installation. Thanks again for your help Mark and msPeachy! Lovely community!
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DavidOct 28 '12 at 5:32

Not all of them. I have added an answer with the method I use when this problem happens to me. The upgrade itself (installation of new packages) went fine, the clean-up is what was missed, and since it's the last part of the upgrade process, I don't think anything else is likely to be missed. What other apps besides the Unity shell are not running? Are these apps listed in the output you copied and pasted? I included some help on getting Unity working based on the assumption that some package is not installed, please let me know if this works for you or not. :)
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Mark PaskalOct 28 '12 at 6:49

1 Answer
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The upgrade seems to have gone mostly fine, there are just obsolete packages lying around that weren't cleaned up afterwards. I just use synaptic to remove the extra packages. I recommend removing them all and reinstalling the newer versions from PPA or the Ubuntu repo. libnux-2.0.0 in particular is going to stop you from running Unity.

You may need to install this from the software centre by searching for 'Synaptic' or by running sudo apt-get install synaptic in a terminal.

Open Synaptic and click the button in the lower left corner that says 'Origin'.

On the list of origins that appears above the stack of buttons where you just clicked, select 'Local' so that synaptic now looks like this: As you can see, I also have a number of packages installed left over from my upgrade, although most of mine are not there in error (Amnesia, Bastion)

You can use the check-boxes to remove packages that you don't want or need. Click on them and choose 'Completely Remove' You just need to make sure that nothing you do want to keep is removed with it. When you see the window below, check the list of packages for ones you do not want to remove.If you find there are a lot of apps there you want to keep, they were probably installed via PPA and are at a newer version than in the Ubuntu repository. Either remove them and add back the version from the Ubuntu repo, or add the PPA back and the packages will be removed from the listing of local/obsolete packages after an apt-get update or clicking reload in Synaptic.

Work through each item on the list, and then click apply to have synaptic remove those local/obsolete packages that were left behind.

That should effectively complete the clean-up that the release upgrader so often messes up. (for me at least)

I can see why Unity is not working for you. Some of the libraries it needs to work in Quantal are still on old versions on your machine. If running sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade; sudo apt-get install unity does not solve the problem, you'll need to remove these packages using Synaptic and then reinstall the newer versions from the repo. Unless APT is broken this should just work.

Thanks so much for your help. Though I can now clean up all these applications, I do not recognize them all of them. Which makes me think it might be better not to worry about cleaning so much or I might break something. Thanks again for your excellent support! Now I'm a bit less ignorant than what I was before!
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DavidOct 28 '12 at 11:00

@David nothing there should break your system. On closer inspection I can see why Unity isn't working too. libnux version two is installed locally on your system, and version 3 is in quantal. Does running update manager or sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade on your machine have any affect on Unity working?
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Mark PaskalOct 29 '12 at 0:23

If you're really nervous, just do a seamless upgrade via the DVD, you'll keep your files and just the OS will be wiped. (If you store data outside of /home or /srv, move them first!)
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Mark PaskalOct 29 '12 at 0:35

HI, Unity doesn't work from the Icon in System settings, but I can access it from Ubuntu tweak, so that's solved!
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DavidOct 29 '12 at 11:14